Java Performance, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11. Database Performance Best Practices

This chapter investigates the performance of Java-driven database applications. Applications that access a database are subject to non-Java performance issues: if a database is I/O-bound or if it is executing SQL queries that require full table scans because an index is missing, no amount of Java tuning or application coding is going to solve the performance issues. When dealing with database technologies, be prepared to learn (from another source) about how to tune and program the database.

This is not to say that the performance of an application that uses a database is insensitive to things under the control of the JVM and the Java technologies that are used. Rather, for good performance, it is necessary to ensure that both the database and the application are correctly tuned and executing the best possible code.

This chapter starts by looking at JDBC drivers, since those influence the data frameworks that talk to relational databases. Many frameworks abstract the JDBC details, including the JPA and the Spring data modules.

SQL and NoSQL

The focus of this chapter is on relational databases and the Java technologies that access them. There are ways to access nonrelational databases via Java, but they are not standard. Relational databases adhere to various SQL standards, including the ANSI/ISO SQL standard (aka SLQ:2003). Adhering to that standard means that the Java platform itself can provide a standard interface to those databases; ...